Change Private to Public Google+ Sharing in Publicize

Jetpack is a one stop solution for most of the WordPress site’s needs and Publicize is one simple plugin part of Jetpack helps to share your posts instantly with social media. Publicize shares the post when it is published and the settings can be changed in WordPress post editor instantly.

Publicize View in WordPress Post Editor

Though Publicize is very useful the problem is that it shares the posts in private mode (shared only with you) when used with Google Plus. For most of the users privately sharing with their own circles or only sharing with themselves is really not meaningful to get more views.

Google Plus – Posts Shared Only With You

Private Sharing in Google Plus

Change Private to Public Google+ Sharing in Publicize

Here is the solution to change the private to public sharing so that everyone can see your posts.

Login to your Google+ account and navigate to settings.

If you have connected Publicize to Google+ profile then go to your profile settings.

Google+ Profile Settings

If you have connected Publicize to Google+ page then go to your page settings.

Google+ Page Settings

Once you are in settings page, click on “Manage apps & +1’s on posts” button (previously “Manage apps & activities” as shown in the above screenshots).

You will see the WordPress app connected to your Google+ account with visible to status as “Only you” or “Your circles”. This is the default settings in Google+ and the reason why the posts from Publicize were not visible to public.

Change Private to Public Sharing in Google Plus

Click on the “edit” link and change the visibility status to “Public” and save your settings.

Change Visibility to Public in Google+

Any WordPress post shared from Publicize henceforth will be publicly shared in Google+ and visible to all.

Reshare Privately Shared Posts to Public

If you have not noticed this issue and shared many posts with “Only you” mode then use the reshare option to share the posts again in “Public” mode.

Resharing Google Plus Posts in Public Mode

1. If you are changing or adding additional connection in Publicize then try disconnecting and connecting again with Google+ which may help sometime especially when you are connecting to local business page.

2. While Facebook and Twitter are making the sharing as simple as possible we do not understand why Google makes it more difficult.

This no longer works. Google decided to make it even harder since they probably don’t want people automatically posting from their blog. My guess is it is another control-freak mentality issue on the part of Google (again).

Nope. Following the links you suggest shows me the WordPress app but there is nothing there about who can see it. No way to change it and I STILL have to manually repost every single post to public. Stupid system.

I would also like to know this. Even under classic settings, I see the manage connected apps page, but the “edit” button for visibility is no longer there. No way to edit default privacy that I can see…

Thank you for the tip! I’ve just come back to your article to follow the exact steps, because I noticed that my Google+ posts were not publicly shared, even though I already changed the app settings for WordPress to public once before! It’s a shame they don’t have the option to change the visibility of an original post, but resharing is still an OK way to go. :-)

Ideally it should be shared publicly with an option to change to private. Now it is other way round which most of the people don’t even aware and make the sharing useless. It is even worse in the new interface, hope Google guys have time to change this.

I got stuck at “Manage Apps & Activities” since I have a choice between “Manage Apps & +1’s on Posts” or “Manage Google+ Activity”, and a click on either does not take me to the right place to fix this…

Any additional advice for this tech-muppet would be hugely appreciated!

Thank you!! I figured it was just a switch to flip, that was buried in there somewhere, but didn’t have 3 days to go digging for it! That you very much for supplying the map, and keeping it up to date, as well. Much appreciated!! :)

You are using new G+ interface and we do not know where to see the connected “Apps” in new Google+ interface as it only shows activity logs. You can still go back to the old interface using “Back to classic G+” option available under menus (in lower left corner) to see the details like shown in the article.

For Google+ business pages – still the interface works explained above from “Google My Business > Settings” menu.

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